LISTMAKER: MONEYBALL

"The only football players in my time were fellows who really loved to play football. They were not in it for the money. There wasn't much money there. They would have played football for nothing.." 
- RED GRANGE


That can't be said of today's game, as the $9.5 billion a year behemoth that is the NFL dwarfs the next largest American sports league (MLB) by 25% and pays its quarterbacks an average $3,840,017, and even its kickers average $1,662,786 (the most under-appreciated position appears to be tight end, with an average salary of $1,420,890).

Some teams spend a lot more than others. Not surprisingly, the Cowboy's billionaire owner Jerry Jones has the 1st and 5th highest paid linebackers (Ware, Spencer), the highest paid tight end (Witten), and the overall fifth highest paid player in the NFL (Romo). The Broncos have three of the top 25 salaries in the NFL (Bailey, Manning, Dumervil). Player pay, however makes up less than 48% of total revenue. How does the rest of the spending affect on-the-field performance? Some teams have been very successful financially without being competitive.

For this week's big list, I decided to look at how NFL teams are using their revenue, based on how much each team is spending (these numbers fluctuate constantly, so my calculations are based on what they were on the day I pulled the data) compared to how much each team is winning. I compared the most recent spending data to the number of wins each team had in 2012.   I have ranked the five WORST managers of money in the NFL and the five BEST, based on how much overall cash spending each team incurs annually divided by the number of games that said teams won last year ($PW).

TICKER: Hernandez Officially Released

Aaron Hernandez has been officially released from the New England Patriots after his arrest this morning.

Respect for the team in making this tough decision - will their TE pass-heavy offense take a hit this fall?

FIRST CONTACT

THE EXPERIMENT: SOLICITING A RESPONSE

Yesterday I searched the "Contact Us" sections of several NFL team websites, and wrote inquiries to a few of the teams that are near me, telling whomever reads the comments they receive that I am searching for a team to support, and asking them if they knew of a reason why I should support their team. If a team even responds, that could really add some points in the PROS column.